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Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

This newspaper article sheds some light on allegations - unsubstantiated - appearing in a newspaper respected for its liberal outlook.

I'm amazed at the amount of time and energy certain agencies are employing to defame Edward Snowden despite which public opinion in the United States would appear according to polls to be moving towards support for Snowden's revelations:

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

This might be one of the reasons:

Revealed: how Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages

• Secret files show scale of Silicon Valley co-operation on Prism
• Outlook.com encryption unlocked even before official launch
• Skype worked to enable Prism collection of video calls
• Company says it is legally compelled to comply

Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

Those articles don't provide details of anything. They provide someone's opinion piece on what they view the issues as.

Originally Posted by kallipolis

This newspaper article sheds some light on allegations - unsubstantiated - appearing in a newspaper respected for its liberal outlook.

I'm amazed at the amount of time and energy certain agencies are employing to defame Edward Snowden despite which public opinion in the United States would appear according to polls to be moving towards support for Snowden's revelations:

So now you're demanding evidence? Where is the evidence Americans have been spied on? Where are the phone calls they've been listening in on? Where are the e-mails they've been amassing? I'm all for evidence. So because Snowden, a proven liar, says that China and Russia didn't get anything, it must be true? The only thing that article got right was that there is no evidence that China and Russia got anything from Snowden, and that's because they don't have Snowdens leaking their information. They get put down at the airport, if not before. I can assure you that Russia and China have everything they need from Snowden, whether he willingly gave it up or not.

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

Originally Posted by tigerfan482

So now you're demanding evidence? Where is the evidence Americans have been spied on? Where are the phone calls they've been listening in on? Where are the e-mails they've been amassing? I'm all for evidence. So because Snowden, a proven liar, says that China and Russia didn't get anything, it must be true? The only thing that article got right was that there is no evidence that China and Russia got anything from Snowden, and that's because they don't have Snowdens leaking their information. They get put down at the airport, if not before. I can assure you that Russia and China have everything they need from Snowden, whether he willingly gave it up or not.

Keep on denying. Keep on stonewalling. The agency must be happy with your input.It would appear that the American general public is beginning to wake up to the fact that their NSA is snooping on them despite the daily denials.....despite your daily, repetitive declarations that civil servants and military personnel never lie.

[...]No sooner had the Obama administration described Fox News reporter James Rosen as a "co-conspirator" along with a source who had related information deemed classified as background on a rather innocuous story about North Korea, then Regimist "journalists" began straining at the bit to try this novel bit of legal theory out.

[...]The French denied it, and then acknowledged it: the Portuguese claimed "technical" reasons, the Spanish outright lied about it, and the Italians weren’t saying much: 48 hours after Bolivian President Evo Morales was "kidnapped by imperialism," as his Foreign Minister put it, and refused overflight rights upon returning from a conference in Moscow, the explanation for why his plane was stopped in mid-flight and forced to turn around got even murkier.

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

Originally Posted by kallipolis

Keep on denying. Keep on stonewalling. The agency must be happy with your input.It would appear that the American general public is beginning to wake up to the fact that their NSA is snooping on them despite the daily denials.....despite your daily, repetitive declarations that civil servants and military personnel never lie.

And you keep on making lofty claims without any evidence and keep on your witch hunt demanding people prove a negative. "It's not my job to prove you're doing something wrong. It's your job to prove you aren't doing something wrong." That may work in Greece, but the US was founded on the principles of guilt, not innocence, needing to be proven.

And you keep on making lofty claims without any evidence and keep on your witch hunt demanding people prove a negative. "It's not my job to prove you're doing something wrong. It's your job to prove you aren't doing something wrong." That may work in Greece, but the US was founded on the principles of guilt, not innocence, needing to be proven.

This. So much this.

That we are capable only of being what we are, remains our unforgivable sin.
- Gene Wolfe

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

S. American states to recall ambassadors from Europe over Bolivian plane incident

The decision to recall European ambassadors was taken by Venezuela’s head of state, Nicolas Maduro, Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez, Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff, and Uruguay’s President, Jose Mujica, during the meeting

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

It seems that the US' frolic and banter continues to redound against it.

It would seem that way, except none of them have withdrawn their ambassadors to the US and neither have they expelled the US ambassadors to their countries. Seems as if their usual bluster will continue, but they won't actually follow through with anything because they rely too heavily on the US to support their economies.

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

First in the techniques of rendition, waterboarding, habeas-corpus suspension, data-mining, overall contempt for civil liberties, and presided over by the “Assassination” President who authorizes aerial murder at his Tuesday evening soirees with a stellar cast of national-security advisers, all with a supine, bankrupt Left looking idly on. With a national resume like that, the only surprise is not ordering a Special Ops mission to Moscow to kidnap Snowden.

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

Originally Posted by newbored

Absurd and deranged

Hey, if Latin American countries want to wave their abilities to grant Snowden asylum in our faces, then we have every right to wave the fact that their economies are built on the US in their's. They have every right to grant Snowden asylum and we have every right not to do business with them in the future. Life is all about choices and consequences. The only thing absurd and deranged is Snowden and these countries thinking they'll try to give the US a black eye and suffer no consequences for it.

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

Originally Posted by palbert

Somewhere along the way we will contract with Mossad to extract him. That way the US and Russia have plausible deniability.

The powers that be in the United States are expending an enormous amount of energy to isolate Snowden...I can only imagine that the embarrassment that the NSA has experienced, and continues to suffer could well have been avoided if the entire matter had been handled in a much subtler manner...but of course the "big guns" are demanding retribution, and so it continues....rather like a soap opera....only it's the military/industrial complex proving to the world how inadequate they truly are when failing to silence a solitary, former employee.

This saga could easily be turned into a comic strip with Edward Snowden as the geek hero standing up to the malevolent forces of evil also known as the NSA. I'd nominate James Franco to play the role of Snowden.

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

Originally Posted by kallipolis

The powers that be in the United States are expending an enormous amount of energy to isolate Snowden...I can only imagine that the embarrassment that the NSA has experienced, and continues to suffer could well have been avoided if the entire matter had been handled in a much subtler manner...but of course the "big guns" are demanding retribution, and so it continues....rather like a soap opera....only it's the military/industrial complex proving to the world how inadequate they truly are when failing to silence a solitary, former employee.

This saga could easily be turned into a comic strip with Edward Snowden as the geek hero standing up to the malevolent forces of evil also known as the NSA. I'd nominate James Franco to play the role of Snowden.

So are you saying it would be ok for the US to use more lethal means of silencing him? For being so heavily involved in violating rights, droning people, and breaking the law like some claim, they sure are going out of their way to apprehend him legally within the framework of the law. Of all people to exercise their might on, this would be the guy - were the US actually in the business of flagrantly disregarding the law.

And yes, they are expending a lot of energy because a) it's their job - it's what they do and b) this guy is running around with laptops full of secrets. I'd imagine they want those back.

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

Maybe we will give up hounding Snowden when we surrender Luis Posada Carrilles to Venezuelan and Cuban authorities.

Posada has been convicted in absentia in Panama, of involvement in various terrorist attacks and plots in the Americas, including: involvement in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed seventy-three people; admitted involvement in a string of bombings in 1997 targeting fashionable Cuban hotels and nightspots; involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion; and involvement in the Iran-Contra affair. .... Posada Carriles has always denied involvement in the airline bombing and the alleged plot against Castro in Panama, but has admitted to fighting for "freedom" in Cuba.

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

Maybe we will give up hounding Snowden when we surrender Luis Posada Carrilles to Venezuelan and Cuban authorities.

And, of course, Carrilles just happened to be our CIA agent.

Why do you think these countries are offering him asylum? They're just going to offer him up as a trade for someone we have. They don't care for Snowden any more than they care for the US. They'll welcome him with open arms, confiscate his computers, and trade him to the US.

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

as [an] Scott Horton interview with McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay lays out in some detail, the Obama administration is in the midst of a "security" clampdown in its own ranks. Non-classified information ordinarily available to the media is now inaccessible and an internal spying regime has been instituted, which encourages government employees to report on each other for "suspicious" behavior.

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

Even before a former U.S. intelligence contractor exposed the secret collection of Americans’ phone records, the Obama administration was pressing a government-wide crackdown on security threats that requires federal employees to keep closer tabs on their co-workers and exhorts managers to punish those who fail to report their suspicions.

President Barack Obama’s unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program, is sweeping in its reach[...]

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

[...]the government’s top scientific advisers have questioned these techniques. Those experts say that trying to predict future acts through behavioral monitoring is unproven and could result in illegal ethnic and racial profiling and privacy violations.[...]

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

Wow newbored. Those are all fancy (and biased) ways of saying that the government has asked its employees to basically say something if you see something. As the article noted, many of the past espionage cases had signs that co-workers saw and never reported because they didn't think twice about them. The purpose of the Insider Threat campaign is to teach people some common signs of those who commit espionage (sudden change in spending habits, sudden change in work quality and attendance, sudden change in normal behavior, etc.) and the proper way to report them. Leaks are damaging to national security, require lots of extra time and money to investigate and recover from, and can put people at risk. This program aims to increase vigilance and really act as a deterrent to those who may be considering breaking the law.

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

I imagine that Russia is buying what Snowden knows...particularly if and as it pertains to the Kremlin. Once they've got what they want...they'll probably poison him with radioactive dust like they love to do.

I wonder if he's finished Crime and Punishment yet....or whether like most of us...he finally found that wallowing in an existential wasteland of despair only drives him to drink more Vodka.

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

I cant help but be terribly amused by his sense of 'freedom' and human rights. Russia. LOL Putin Muzzled him at least so he can use the information the proper way one uses espionage gained materials - under the radar to leverage your opponent. So we shouldn't see any more Guardian gotcha pieces except for what they make up out of thin air to accompany the other articles where they constructed to truth to their liking.

Everyone can be great, because everyone can serve.~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Re: The ridiculous witch hunt against Snowden.

Originally Posted by JayHawk

I cant help but be terribly amused by his sense of 'freedom' and human rights. Russia. LOL Putin Muzzled him at least so he can use the information the proper way one uses espionage gained materials - under the radar to leverage your opponent. So we shouldn't see any more Guardian gotcha pieces except for what they make up out of thin air to accompany the other articles where they constructed to truth to their liking.

I think it's more along the lines of Russia is doing the same thing the US is and they don't want the methods getting out and ruin what they're doing to other countries.